A Very Merry Unbirthday to Me!

Today, March 12th, is my first unbirthday after obtaining the ripe old age of... um... 25. Yeah. 25. Again. For like the 8th time.

It turns out I really didn't take as much of a break from FFXI as I had anticipated. But in the past week or two, I have actually gotten quite a bit accomplished!

Our good buddy Hybrid has recently discovered, from the character Finalfantasyxi, the Buburimu Astral Flow burn camp and has gone completely, if you pardon the expression, ape-shit crazy over there. He must have gotten something like 12 levels in 2 days with SMN burn parties. It's nutso! So, of course, I want a piece of this action too, so I had to go unlock my COR (which didn't take very long at all). Well, in order for them to let me into the party, they basically said I needed to bring a job that they could all Level Sync down to... so, basically, I'm not really making any progress on the jobs I really want to level, but at least I got to experience the camp a few times.

So, the trick works like this:
(1) You have a PL aggro basically half the mobs in Buburimu. In our case, I was running Screamin as PLD75/RDM37 (for max defense, phalanx, etc...). I even had to take off his W Legs because I was outrunning and de-aggro-ing [is that a word?!] basically everything. The party just sits down near the entrance of Mhaura and waits for 10 or 15 minutes while the PL pulls everything. The route I typically took was just heading southeast and then zig-zag my way north up the coastline until I got about 2/3rds of the way to the top of the map. Then I'd start zig-zagging my way back southwest towards the camp. Pulling all of the mobs is actually pretty simple; you just need to provoke 1 of each type of mob that links (birds, goblins, dhalmels, crawlers, etc...) at the beginning and then everything else will follow. The only real tough part is just making sure you don't outrun all of the mobs and deaggro any.

(2) Once you have the desired number of mobs (preferably 40-50) just run back to the camp and stand still while all of the mobs start putting the smack-down on the PL. Now, you need to make sure your party has at 3 SMNs and are level synched down to 15. Once everyone is ready, the SMNs {Astral Flow} and {Blood Pact: Ward} twice. This should basically take out all of the mobs and give everyone in the party a boat-load of xp. It typically jumps your level 15 character up to level 18. NOTE: If noone in the party has a job at level 15, you can still Level Sync down to say level 13 and still use the same tactic, but just pull a smaller batch of mobs.

(3) Now that everyone has gotten their xp, and 3 of your party members have used their 2-hour, head into Mhaura and have the other 3 members job-change to COR. If the CORs use their 2-hour and hit a 5 or a 6, all of your party members' timers are reset, including their 2-hour timers! Huzzah!

(4) Have someone job-change to another level 15 job.

(5) Rinse and repeat.

Using this technique I progressed to BLM 17, SCH 17, PUP 18, THF 23 and SMN 25. I also leveled my BRD up to 12 in the hopes of hitting up this camp in the near future. All-in-all, it's a quick and easy way for people to get xp... but sometimes the amount of time it takes just sitting around waiting for the pull or the time it takes to get a COR to get lucky and reset your 2-hours just takes a little longer than I would like. You probably still end up only making no more than 10k xp per hour so you might just be better off in a normal camp. Oh wait, that means getting a party together in the Dunes... nevermind.

Besides that burn camp, I also hit up the East Ronfaure [S] bird camp and got my SAM up to 49... which makes me a happy panda.

Mog Locker - now expanded to 80!

Gobbie Bag - quest VII completed, so my inventory is now at 65!

ToAU Missions - progressed up to Puppet In Peril.

Zilart Mission - completed Divine Might and got my earring (Bushi)... not that I'm gonna use it for a while, since my SAM is still only at 49. /sigh

CoP Missions - I FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY got {Promyvion - Dem} done and began CoP Chapter 2. My WAR also leveled up to 41 while beating the boss. hehe nice.

Sky - Seiryu finally decided to drop a D Head for me. Byakko and Kirin however still decided to be stingy that night and not drop my much-needed D Legs and Osode. I was first in line for those items that night too. ; ; oh wells... now i'm back down to 3rd or something cuz I don't outside farm like some of the other members of Relentless.

Salvage - I got my first 35 piece (Usukane legs - Hikazu Hakama) from our Arrapago Remnants run! And I think this is actually the first 35 piece our Salvage LS has obtained. I so happy! :)

Relentless - Our newly-reformed sky LS also got our first payout. It was actually 2 weeks worth of payout, but it turned out to be something like 1.2 million gil per person. VERY nice. I really hope we can keep this up.